Editorial: Asking abused priests a life-changing question

In 2010, Fr. James Connell, then vice chancellor of the Milwaukee archdiocese, was publicly accused of complicity in protecting abusive priests. Connell was deeply stung by the accusation, which he denies. But rather than lash out at his accuser, abuse victim Peter Isely, he asked himself a question: “What if I had been a victim of sexual abuse by a priest?”

That question led him to a meeting and ultimately a friendship with Isely, as well as to an increasing activism on behalf of clergy abuse victims and in pursuit of the truth about the scandal.

Connell’s response is especially significant in light of the recent release of some 6,000 pages of documents relating to clerical sex abuse in the Milwaukee archdiocese and church officials’ response.

The documents disclose a distressingly familiar pattern: The archdiocese shuffled offending priests from parish to parish; increasing numbers of youngsters were abused; little was done to stem the abuse until it reached scandalous proportions and was made public; the Vatican was appallingly slow in acting on the charges when bishops finally were pushed to deal seriously with the problem. And at every point in the crisis, the hierarchy’s primary concern was protection of the clergy culture.

Each time there is another disclosure of documents — correspondence, transcripts of depositions, diocesan memos — the reality of an insular, secretive, Renaissance court culture aggressively protective of its clerical status and privilege becomes more apparent.

There are no ideological or national boundaries or characteristics that otherwise explain what is going on. From such darlings of the left as Archbishop Rembert Weakland and Cardinal Roger Mahony to stalwarts of the right such as Cardinal Bernard Law and the late Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, and across cultures, the unifying factor is the same. One wishes someone would find the appropriate wall in the Vatican on which to affix the sign: It’s the culture, stupid!

Connell’s question emerges from a familiar biblical imperative. Doing unto others what we would have them do unto us requires both knowing ourselves well enough to really want to know what the other thinks and feels. “What if I had been a victim of sexual abuse by a priest?” is a question that requires stepping outside of one’s experience, outside of the comforts and privileges of the culture, and risking understanding the devastating effects of being abused.

Asking that question changed Connell’s life.

The palace no longer can contain the secrets, and it seems that so much is tumbling out these days that the apparatus for denying the scandals can no longer keep up. The document release in Milwaukee and the arrest of a monsignor charged with trying to illegally bring into Italy 20 million euros on a private jet are but the latest evidence that the worst of clerical culture is flying apart.

Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki warned the faithful to “prepare to be shocked” at the content of the documents, that their very faith might be shaken. He pleaded that people understand the “evolution of thinking” on sexual abuse of children since the 1970s. “Church leaders and other professionals tried their best to deal with the issue given the knowledge available at the time,” he said.

Sadly, the only thing shocking at this point for anyone who’s been paying attention is that it has taken this long for the church in Milwaukee to release the truth of the matter and that the truth still remains hidden in so many other dioceses.

As for the frayed excuse that there was an evolution in thinking about sex abuse, please spare us. Of course there’s been development in understanding the deep disturbances that cause adults to sexually abuse children.

However, when prelates went to their lawyers before they went to the victims, when they agreed to pay millions for victim silence, when they lied by omission repeatedly in transferring priests without telling unaware pastors, congregations or even other bishops of the deep problems of the priests involved, one can only conclude that the bishops were engaged in a devolution of their understanding of the Gospel.

As Connell says, “When I was in high school [in the 1950s], we learned about statutory rape. We knew that for an adult to have sexual activities with a minor was against the law, and that didn’t change over time.”

It is time that more priests and bishops begin asking the questions that point beyond their own narrow interests and the culture they seek to protect. They should engage the victims who were abused and the community that has been repeatedly betrayed.

Op-Ed Columnist

The Church’s Errant Shepherds

BOSTON, Philadelphia, Los Angeles. The archdioceses change but the overarching story line doesn’t, and last week Milwaukee had a turn in the spotlight, with the release of roughly 6,000 pages of records detailing decades of child sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests there, a sweeping, searing encyclopedia of crime and insufficient punishment.

But the words I keep marveling at aren’t from that wretched trove. They’re from an open letter that Jerome Listecki, the archbishop of Milwaukee, wrote to Catholics just before the documents came out.

“Prepare to be shocked,” he said.

What a quaint warning, and what a clueless one.

Quaint because at this grim point in 2013, a quarter-century since child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church first captured serious public attention, few if any Catholics are still surprised by a priest’s predations.

Clueless because Listecki was referring to the rapes and molestations themselves, not to what has ultimately eroded many Catholics’ faith and what continues to be even more galling than the evil that a man — any man, including one in a cassock or collar — can do. I mean the evil that an entire institution can do, though it supposedly dedicates itself to good.

I mean the way that a religious organization can behave almost precisely as a corporation does, with fudged words, twisted logic and a transcendent instinct for self-protection that frequently trump the principled handling of a specific grievance or a particular victim.

The Milwaukee documents underscore this, especially in the person of Cardinal Timothy Dolan, now the archbishop of New York, previously the archbishop of Milwaukee from 2002 to 2009 and thus one of the characters in the story that the documents tell. Last week’s headlines rightly focused on his part, because he typifies the slippery ways of too many Catholic leaders.

The documents show that in 2007, as the Milwaukee archdiocese grappled with sex-abuse lawsuits and seemingly pondered bankruptcy, Dolan sought and got permission from the Vatican to transfer $57 million into a trust for Catholic cemetery maintenance, where it might be better protected, as he wrote, “from any legal claim and liability.”

Several church officials have said that the money had been previously flagged for cemetery care, and that Dolan was merely formalizing that.

But even if that’s so, his letter contradicts his strenuous insistence before its emergence that he never sought to shield church funds. He did precisely that, no matter the nuances of the motivation.

He’s expert at drafting and dwelling in gray areas. Back in Milwaukee he selectively released the names of sexually abusive priests in the archdiocese, declining to identify those affiliated with, and answerable to, particular religious orders — Jesuits, say, or Franciscans. He said that he was bound by canon law to take that exact approach.

But bishops elsewhere took a different one, identifying priests from orders, and in a 2010 article on Dolan in The Times, Serge F. Kovaleski wrote that a half-dozen experts on canon law said that it did not specifically address the situation that Dolan claimed it did.

Dolan has quibbled disingenuously over whether the $20,000 given to each abusive priest in Milwaukee who agreed to be defrocked can be characterized as a payoff, and he has blasted the main national group representing victims of priests as having “no credibility whatsoever.” Some of the group’s members have surely engaged in crude, provocative tactics, but let’s have a reality check: the group exists because of widespread crimes and a persistent cover-up in the church, because child after child was raped and priest after priest evaded accountability. I’m not sure there’s any ceiling on the patience that Dolan and other church leaders should be expected to muster, especially because they hold themselves up as models and messengers of love, charity and integrity.

That’s the thing. That’s what church leaders and church defenders who routinely question the amount of attention lavished on the church’s child sexual abuse crisis still don’t fully get.

Yes, as they point out, there are molesters in all walks of life. Yes, we can’t say with certainty that the priesthood harbors a disproportionate number of them.

But over the last few decades we’ve watched an organization that claims a special moral authority in the world pursue many of the same legal and public-relations strategies — shuttling around money, looking for loopholes, tarring accusers, massaging the truth — that are employed by organizations devoted to nothing more than the bottom line.

In San Diego, diocesan leaders who filed for bankruptcy were rebuked by a judge for misrepresenting the local church’s financial situation to parishioners being asked to help pay for sex-abuse settlements.

In St. Louis church leaders claimed not to be liable for an abusive priest because while he had gotten to know a victim on church property, the abuse itself happened elsewhere.

In Kansas City, Mo., Rebecca Randles, a lawyer who has represented abuse victims, says that the church floods the courtroom with attorneys who in turn drown her in paperwork. In one case, she recently told me, “the motion-to-dismiss pile is higher than my head — I’m 5-foot-4.”

Also in Kansas City, Bishop Robert Finn still inhabits his post as the head of the diocese despite his conviction last September for failing to report a priest suspected of child sexual abuse to the police. This is how the church is in fact unlike a corporation. It coddles its own at the expense of its image.

As for Dolan, he is by many accounts and appearances one of the good guys, or at least one of the better ones. He has often demonstrated a necessary vigor in ridding the priesthood of abusers. He has given many victims a voice.

But look at the language in this 2005 letter he wrote to the Vatican, which was among the documents released last week. Arguing for the speedier dismissal of an abusive priest, he noted, in cool legalese, “The liability for the archdiocese is great as is the potential for scandal if it appears that no definitive action has been taken.”

His attention to appearances, his focus on liability: he could be steering an oil company through a spill, a pharmaceutical giant through a drug recall.

As for “the potential for scandal,” that’s as poignantly optimistic a line as Listecki’s assumption that the newly released Milwaukee documents would shock Catholics. By 2005 the scandal that Dolan mentions wasn’t looming but already full blown, and by last week the only shocker left was that some Catholic leaders don’t grasp its greatest component: their evasions and machinations.

Clergy sex abuse victims to see Milwaukee archdiocese files

Written by M.L. JOHNSON Associated Press Jun. 23, 2013

MILWAUKEE — The Archdiocese of Milwaukee plans to make dozens of priests’ personnel files public in the next week, along with hundreds of pages of other documents that sex abuse victims hope will hold church leaders accountable for transferring abusive priests to other parishes and concealing their crimes for decades.

The documents are being released as part of a deal reached in federal bankruptcy court between the archdiocese and victims suing it for fraud. The archdiocese has said the records will include personnel files for 42 priests with verified claims of abuse against them, along with depositions from top church officials, including New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who previously led the Milwaukee archdiocese. The documents are to be posted on the archdiocese’s website by July 1.

Similar files made public by other Roman Catholic dioceses and religious orders have detailed how leaders tried to protect the church by shielding priests and not reporting child sex abuse to authorities. The cover-up extended to the top of the Catholic hierarchy. Correspondence obtained by The Associated Press in 2010 showed the future Pope Benedict XVI had resisted pleas in the 1980s to defrock a California priest with a record of molesting children. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger led the Vatican office responsible for disciplining abusive priests before his election as pope.

Archdiocese officials in Milwaukee have long acknowledged that abusive priests were transferred to new churches with no warning to parishioners. Former Archbishop Rembert Weakland publicly apologized to a Sheboygan church for this in 1992, and in a 2008 deposition previously made public, he spoke of multiple cases in which church leaders were aware of priests’ histories but members were not. Still, victims have pushed aggressively for the priests’ files to be released.

Charles Linneman, 45, of Sugar Grove, Ill., said he was an altar boy when he met Franklyn Becker at St. Joseph’s Parish in Lyons in southeastern Wisconsin in 1980 and was abused by him when he visited Becker following the priest’s move to Milwaukee. Linneman read Becker’s file several years ago when it became public during litigation in California, where Becker also served.

Linneman said he had long wondered whether coming forward before he did in 2002 would have kept other children from being hurt. It was a relief, he said, when the file showed no reports of children being abused after him.“It helped me move on,” Linneman said. But it also led him to leave the Catholic church, stunned by what he saw as a massive cover-up.

“I really got fed up,” he said. “I’m like, I just can’t believe all these lies and betrayals that went on. … The archdiocese is supposed to be people in charge that are responsible and morally ethical, and that’s not what they did.”

Becker was removed from the priesthood in 2004. Messages left at a Mayville number listed in his name weren’t returned. His file is among a few from Milwaukee that have already been made public. But Linneman said he still plans to read whatever comes out on July 1 because his attorneys told him the records will likely include some he hasn’t seen.

While certain church officials and attorneys for both sides have seen the roughly 6,000 pages of documents, the victims have not.

Jerry Topczewski, chief of staff for Archbishop Jerome Listecki, said the archdiocese had shared some files with some victims over the years but was reluctant to make them public because of privacy concerns. It eventually agreed to do so when it became clear that victims would hold up the bankruptcy case until the information came out. Some of the files contain graphic material, and people “should be prepared to be shocked,” he said.

At the same time, most of the priests’ names have been known since the archdiocese’s release of 43 with verified abuse claims against them in 2004. Two others, Ronald Engel and Donald Musinski, were added to the list later. The allegations against Musinski came to light only after the archdiocese filed for bankruptcy in 2011 and his file will be released later, once it is complete, Topczewski said. Two other priests’ files aren’t being released because they involve single victims who could easily be identified.

The impact of church documents released elsewhere has varied greatly, said Terry McKiernan, who has spent more than a decade collecting and preserving clergy sex abuse records for BishopAccountability.org. In one of the biggest scandals involving the church, Cardinal Bernard Law resigned as the head of the Boston archdiocese within days of the 2002 release of child sex abuse documents that also described a priest abandoning his adult lover as she overdosed. But in other places, where files were too massive or disorganized for most people to make sense of them, they drew little attention, McKiernan said.Even when victims were successful in bringing the truth to light, some found it didn’t have the result they had hoped. Joelle Casteix, 42, of Newport Beach, Calif., was abused by a teacher at a Catholic high school in the 1980s. Documents in her case were made public in 2005 as part of a $100 million settlement with the Diocese of Orange, an experience she called “life-changing.”

“I got my human dignity back,” she said in an email. “I was able to get truth and power for the first time since I was 16. For years, people thought I was crazy. But now, everyone knows that I was right and truthful all along.”

Yet despite the publicity, her former teacher was able to keep his job at a Michigan college. Officials there see her as a disgruntled ex-girlfriend, Casteix said, adding that the situation “makes me ill.”

5 things to know

How many priests were involved? The Archdiocese of Milwaukee has verified claims of sexual abuse by 45 priests, including 23 who are still alive. None is allowed to work as a priest, and 15 have been officially defrocked. Most of them are accused of abuse that took place before 1990.

How many victims are there? It’s hard to say because some victims may not have come forward. But one former priest, Lawrence Murphy, has been accused of sexually abusing some 200 boys at a school for the deaf from 1950 to 1974. Other priests have been accused by only one person thus far. There are more than 570 sexual abuse claims pending in bankruptcy court, but some of those involve lay people or priests assigned to religious orders, not the archdiocese. Attorneys have not said specifically how many of the 570 claims relate to the 45 priests on the archdiocese’s restricted list.

How did clergy abuse cases end up in bankruptcy court? Abuse victims had long sought to hold the archdiocese accountable, but most didn’t come forward until well into adulthood, when it was too late under Wisconsin law to sue the church for negligence in supervising its priests. A 2007 Wisconsin Supreme Court decision gave them a window, saying the six-year limit in fraud cases didn’t start until the deception was uncovered. The archdiocese filed for bankruptcy in 2011, once it became clear that it could face a slew of lawsuits. It said it wouldn’t have the money to pay if those cases went against it.What’s in the documents the archdiocese is releasing by July 1? It’s hard to say for certain because no one has seen the collection yet except attorneys and certain church leaders. Jerry Topczewski, chief of staff for Archbishop Jerome Listecki, has said it will include the personnel files of 42 priests, depositions of church leaders including New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who previously led the Milwaukee archdiocese, and records from the files of bishops and other key figures.

What happens next? The release of the documents has been important to sexual abuse victims, but it does not affect resolution of the bankruptcy case. Topczewski said the next step in that will be for the archdiocese to come up with a reorganization plan detailing how it will provide for victims and pay its expenses in the future. Mike Finnegan, an attorney representing many victims, says one focus for his legal team will be trying to get the archdiocese’s former insurers to cover abuse claims.

W. H. Auden wrote in his famous poem “September 1, 1939”, the terrible day the German army invaded Poland, that “all I have is a voice to undo the folded lie.”

The brave survivors of childhood rape and sexual assault of the Milwaukee Archdiocese from St. John’s School for the Deaf have been undoing the folded lies of the Milwaukee Catholic hierarchy and their Vatican overseers for a very long time: nearly four decades. Now these beautiful voices—which are really the single voice of justice for all victims of clergy sex crimes—will be heard and seen by a worldwide audience thanks to Oscar winning director Alex Gibney’s powerful new film, “Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God”, which will make its U.S. premier in Milwaukee on Friday.

Survivors and family members of priest predators of the Milwaukee Archdiocese are expected to be in attendance at the premier to welcome Gibney and his film, and will once again embrace these deaf survivor champions and advocates, several of whom are long-time local SNAP leaders.

Unfortunately, Fr. Lawrence Murphy, the predator priest who is the focus of Gibney’s film, is only one of literally dozens of clerics and church workers in the Milwaukee Archdiocese—at least as many as 144, according to recent filings in U.S. Federal Court—alleged to have raped and assaulted children and minors. And most of these recorded crimes against children, over 8,000 according to the court records, took place during a 25 year period from 1976 to 2002 when the Milwaukee Archdiocese was under the control of one man: Archbishop Rembert Weakland.

The Pope might have been in Rome but it was Weakland who was in Milwaukee. During his entire tenure as archbishop, Weakland concealed and transferred child molesting clerics from one parish and school to another without alerting police or notifying the public. In fact, Weakland knew there were so many priests assaulting children under his supervision that, according to his 2008 deposition, he never informed parishes with offender priests assigned, or once assigned to them, because, as he put it, that would entail notifying “nearly all” of the 300 parishes of the archdiocese and presumably, that’s the only job he would be doing. Exactly.

In another deposition, Weakland says he didn’t tell parents and families that he had secretly assigned a known diagnosed pedophile, Fr. Peter Burns, to their parish because they would have been OK with it. Tell that to the parents of the child who was raped by Burns after Weakland reassigned him and then the youngster killed himself several months later. On it goes, predator priest after predator priest.
And this is why Weakland is the chief defendant today in the fraud cases which have brought the archdiocese into Federal Bankruptcy Court.

That is why it is frustrating and fatiguing to have to once again see and hear the now admittedly softer spoken Weakland still peddling his self-serving, mostly fictional account of how he was the insider “good guy” who tried to do “something” about Murphy. This, of course, is nonsense, and very like the same excuse that defenders of the current Pope, Benedict XVI, use to explain Benedict’s inaction and favoritism for child molesting priests when he was in charge of the Vatican’s powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. It was in this role that Benedict, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was eventually put in charge of Murphy’s case and, as is well documented in Murphy’s once secret church file, pretty much did what Weakland had been doing with Murphy, along with nearly all of the other abusive priests of the Milwaukee archdiocese: nothing.

Weakland’s basic defense is what we hear from those who never reported Jerry Sandusky at Penn State to the police or the public: “I told Coach Paterno. He told me he knew best how to handle it and not to tell anyone else.” Apparently, Weakland too couldn’t tell anyone about Murphy because Ratzinger told him not to. So, like Sandusky, he had no choice but to allow Murphy continued free and unsupervised access to the boy’s locker room. There is no evidence, however, that Cardinal Ratzinger ever prohibited Weakland from informing the public, alerting parishes, or ordering Murphy into a secure facility with supervision.

Weakland also claims that both the criminal and church statutes and laws had expired on Murphy’s crimes. As for church “statutes” or so called “canon law,” these are not actual “laws” but internal church rules. American citizens are not required under the constitution to obey canon law. They are morally required to obey civil and criminal law, however, and contrary to Weakland’s assertion, Murphy could have been prosecuted, at least in Minnesota, but likely elsewhere, if he had been reported to police in those states because the criminal statutes on those crimes were, in fact, still active, right up until Murphy’s death.

Even more incriminatory are the notations in the Murphy file that the archdiocese was concerned that Murphy’s case might get into civil court or find its way into the press. That is why Weakland finally decided to “act” with Rome, after waiting nearly 20 years to do so. Weakland misleadingly writes Ratzinger that he had just “learned” about Murphy’s crimes when, in fact, he had left Murphy working in ministry and parishes in another Wisconsin diocese for years.

Ironically, Weakland says in the film that he had met Murphy “once” and found him “childlike”. This meeting took place after Weakland’s own church hired criminologist had told him that Murphy had likely sexually molested 200 deaf children and his pedophilia was so profound it was “untreatable” by mental health experts. What did Weakland do with this dangerous predator after meeting with him? Send him right back unsupervised into communities, parishes and schools in Northern Wisconsin.

But most damning of all are Weakland’s own private words on the subject. Soon after Murphy’s death in 1998, in response to a nun who has written Weakland asking him why Murphy’s funeral had not been publically advertised, Weakland explains: “I talked in Rome at great length about how to handle all of this,” he writes, “to protect Father Murphy’s good name I had to do what I did and keep this as quiet as possible.”

What’s more credible: Weakland’s interview for an HBO documentary or his own words in a private letter he wrote at the time of Murphy’s death?

As for Weakland’s further claim about how “painful” it was for him to tell the deaf community that Rome would not defrock Murphy, when the pedophile priest died, Weakland dispatched his auxiliary bishop Richard Sklba (who Weakland calls his “go to guy” on abuse cases in his deposition) to personally perform the service. Why is this significant? Because the secret church file shows that deaf victims of Murphy were begging Weakland and the archdiocese not to allow Murphy to be buried as a priest. Not only did Bishop Sklba perform the service and praise Murphy’s life and work, he dressed Murphy in full priestly vestments and the casket was open. And to this day, Murphy’s gravestone reads: “Reverend Lawrence Murphy.”

Fortunately, Weakland’s actual involvement in Murphy’s case and many other serial child molesting priest cases in the Milwaukee Archdiocese have been widely reported, especially in the Milwaukee area but also in the national media. Today anyone can examine for themselves the mountains of evidence—even with 60,000 pages of documents still to be released—of Weakland’s direct involvement in covering up for several high profile serial child molesting priests besides Murphy—such as Frs. Becker, Widera , McArthur, Burns, Effinger, Hanser and many, many others. (Click on this link, select Wisconsin, and click on Archdiocese of Milwaukee for a complete listing of substantiated offenders http://bishop-accountability.org/priestdb/PriestDBbydiocese.html; for a detailed history of Weakland’s involvement with predator priests, including religious order clerics, up until more recent document releases, click here.)

Finally, as if more evidence of Weakland’s character and conduct is required, when Weakland’s lawyers won an unprecedented Wisconsin Supreme Court decision in the 1990’s that immunized pedophile priests and bishops from any and all lawsuits against them—based on a controversial interpretation of the 1st amendment, the only such ruling in U.S. history—Weakland went after victims who had filed cases for court costs, even where the priest admitted to Weakland that he had sexually assaulted the plaintiff as a child and where Weakland had transferred that priest into that child’s parish with a prior history of known crimes.

One St. John’s survivor extensively interviewed in Gibney’s film, Gary Smith, was forced to sign a legal release with the archdiocese in the late 1970’s when then Archbishop Cousins required him to apologize to church officials in order to receive $5,000 for counseling. The film notes it took 20 years before Smith received the money. What it doesn’t mention is that it is Weakland who paid the check, but only after Smith was forced to sign yet another legal release. When Smith approached Weakland’s successor, Timothy Dolan, after Dolan offered small financial settlements of $20,000 to $50,000 to victims in exchange for—you guessed it—legal releases, Dolan’s lawyers told Smith he could not be helped because he had already signed a release under Weakland. All three archbishops acted exactly the same way in their treatment of Smith. And you can now add a fourth to this ignoble list, Archbishop Jerome Listecki, who is currently attempting to throw out Smith and over 550 other victim claims from federal bankruptcy court. As far as Smith is concerned, and all victims from the Milwaukee Archdiocese–whether its Cousins, Weakland, Dolan or Listecki–what’s the difference which archbishop it is when the results are pretty much the same?

Finally, Weakland has never apologized publically to victim/survivors and their families, and he could have used the interview with Gibney to perform this one decent gesture, knowing victims of priests he was responsible for would be undoubtedly watching the film. He could have apologized for his written remarks he once made in the Catholic newspaper that not all victims of priests “are so innocent” and that some victims are “street wise and savvy.” He could have apologized when in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal, around the very time he was sending secret reports about Murphy to Ratzinger, he opines that once a priest loses sexual interest in a child that is “when the squealing starts” and “you have to deal with it.” Perhaps he had in mind some of the deaf victims of Murphy who were causing him so much consternation. And he could apologize as to why he commissioned a bronze relief of himself in the cathedral, which is still there, depicting himself in the place of Christ shepherding little children, when so many children’s lives were destroyed under his care.

Victim/survivors in the Milwaukee Archdiocese wrongly assumed that when Weakland released his “memoirs” in 2008–where he makes the laughable defense that he didn’t know that when he became archbishop that sex with children was a crime–it would be, mercifully, the last we would have to hear from him. We were wrong. But at least this time all the folded lies of Weakland are ultimately reduced to sheer insignificance in Gibney’s epic and sweeping documentary because we finally get to hear for ourselves the words of the St. John’s survivors.

And we can never hear enough from these brave men. Ever.

SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is the world’s oldest and largest support group for clergy abuse victims. We’ve been around for 23 years and have more than 12,000 members. Despite the word “priest” in our title, we have members who were molested by religious figures of all denominations, including nuns, rabbis, bishops, and Protestant ministers. Our national website is SNAPnetwork.org. The local Wisconsin website is SNAPwisconsin.com.

Archbishop Suggests Marsicek Should Have Been Removed

Citing reports of repeated concerns about Father Robert Marsicek, Listecki writes that, ‘collectively they call into question allowing this priest to remain serving as pastor of two parishes, each with schools or daycare programs.’

In a pastoral letter now published in his blog on the Archdiocese of Milwaukee website, Archbishop Jerome Listecki says that while the church followed “the letter of the law” in allowing Father Robert Marsicek to retain his priestly duties in Wauwatosa while he was being investigated in California, it might not have followed “the spirit of the law,” in light of the church’s pledge to keep children safe.

The contrite missive, titled “Child Abuse Awareness,” begins by noting that this is Child Abuse Awareness month and this week is Safe Environment Week in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, and his celebration of a Mass of Atonement at St. John Vianney Parish in Brookfield for the victims of clergy sexual abuse, as well for “the community that carries the pain” associated with it.

Listecki outlines steps the Catholic Church has taken over the past decade in training of its staff, education of its flock, and outreach to the community, restoring trust and credibility to an institution “badly broken” by its response to past allegations of abuse.

But, “trust is fragile,” Listecki goes on. “As hard as we work to build it, it can be shattered again in a moment, and with it, all the good work that has been accomplished can be dismissed as meaningless.

“I’m afraid that’s what happened as news reports highlighted the situation in Wauwatosa, where a priest was allowed to remain in ministry as civil authorities from another state investigated an allegation from the 1970s, which was just recently brought forward.”

Clearly referring to Marsicek, in some detail, Listecki writes that the allegations were brought through a third party, not the victim, and that the victim was unwilling to cooperate, leaving the allegation unsubstantiated.

However, Listecki said in his letter, “a report about the same priest came from one of our schools, from a teacher, thankfully, who was following their Safe Environment training.

“Although charges were not brought by civil authorities, in looking at the complete picture of the priest’s history, we see a priest who was repeatedly warned about boundary issues. None of these behaviors were sexual abuse, but collectively they call into question allowing this priest to remain serving as pastor of two parishes, each with schools or daycare programs.

“While our decisions followed the letter of the law in accordance with existing policies, I am not sure they followed the spirit of the law with regard to our pledge to be vigilant in keeping children safe.”

Listecki said that as he read news accounts and “reflected upon the comments some parishioners made to me, I could feel the Church’s credibility crumbling again.”

Marsicek was pastor of Divine Savior Church in Orangevale, CA, from 1987 to 2000, and was being investigated there on at least one and possibly two allegations of child sexual abuse.

Since then he has been pastor of Pius X in Wauwatosa, as well as Mother of Good Counsel in Milwaukee. He was also priest designee of Wauwatosa Catholic School, merged two years ago from the former Pius X and St. Bernard parish schools.

On March 28, Marsicek was suspended from all priestly duties after a teacher at the school, located at St. Bernard, 7474 Harwood Ave., reported to her principal that on March 22 and 26 she had seen Marsicek inappropriately touching a girl while holding her on his lap in her classroom, according to police reports.

Multiple instances of parents, teachers and daycare workers raising concerns also surfaced, none of them rising to the level of sexual abuse complaints. Rather, they constituted worries that “Father Bob,” as he was called, was uncomfortably close and physical in his contact with children.

In the most recent allegations leading to the police investigation, the teacher reported seeing Marsicek holding the girl on his lap and squeezing her buttocks and upper thigh.

The child, interviewed by a social worker trained in recognizing abuse, said Marsicek had also touched and squeezed her breasts.

Daycare workers told police that Marsicek had on several occasions taken children to his living quarters, from which they returned with candy and stuffed animals.

Marsicek was repeatedly warned about this sort of “boundary behavior” and repeatedly promised to amend his physical behavior with children.

Marsicek, in interviews with police, maintained his innocence, saying his fondness for children because of their “loveableness” leads him to demonstative contact but not for sexual gratification.

NEW YORK — Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, was deposed Wednesday about abuse cases against Roman Catholic clergy in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, which he led from 2002 until 2009.

Frank LoCoco, an attorney for the Milwaukee Archdiocese, and Jeff Anderson, a plaintiffs’ attorney, confirmed the cardinal was deposed.

The Milwaukee Archdiocese faces allegations from nearly 500 people. Archbishop Jerome Listecki, the current Milwaukee church leader, sought bankruptcy protection in 2011, saying the process was needed to compensate victims fairly while ensuring the archdiocese could still function. Milwaukee is the eighth diocese in the U.S. to seek bankruptcy protection since the abuse scandal erupted in 2002 in Boston.

Dolan is one of two U.S. cardinals to be deposed this week. Cardinal Roger Mahony, the retired archbishop of Los Angeles, is scheduled to be questioned Saturday in a lawsuit over a visiting Mexican priest who police believe molested 26 children in 1987. The Rev. Nicolas Aguilar Rivera fled to Mexico in 1988 after parents complained. He has been ousted from the priesthood but remains a fugitive.

Both Dolan and Mahony will soon be in Rome to participate in the conclave that will elect a successor to Pope Benedict XVI, who is resigning.

Pressure has been building in Italy for Mahony to bow out of the conclave; however, Mahony has indicated in postings on his blog and Twitter accounts that he will participate in the papal election.

The Los Angeles Archdiocese this month released thousands of pages under court order from the confidential personnel files of more than 120 accused clergy. The files show that Mahony and other top archdiocese officials maneuvered behind the scenes to shield accused priests and protect the church from a growing scandal while keeping parishioners in the dark.

LoCoco said in a phone interview with The Associated Press that Dolan was asked about his decision to publicize the names of priests who molested children.

“The names were published so that people would come forward, share their story and begin what Cardinal Dolan and all those involved would be a healing process,” LoCoco said.

Dolan’s deposition was first reported by The New York Times.

Additional church officials deposed in connection with the bankruptcy and lawsuits include another former Milwaukee archbishop, Rembert Weakland; a retired auxiliary bishop; an archdiocese official who helps victims; the archdiocesan chancellor; and others, according to LoCoco and a spokesman for the Milwaukee archdiocese.

The Milwaukee Archdiocese recently said it was going broke. Its legal and other fees have reached nearly $9 million, according to court filings. Advocates for victims have accused the archdiocese of trying to shield assets by transferring millions of dollars separately into a cemetery trust fund and a parish fund several years ago.

Dolan is the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. His name has come up on some Vatican analysts’ lists of cardinals who could be elected in the upcoming conclave, though he is considered a longshot.

Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the New York Archdiocese, said Dolan had long-awaited the chance to discuss his decision to publicize the names as part of his efforts to help victims.

“He has indicated over the past two years that he was eager to cooperate in whatever way he could,” Zwilling said in a statement.